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Paul Nicholls began this jumps season as challenger, rather than champion, for the first time in seven years. In recent months he has also lost a golden generation of champion horses, a consummate jockey and, so it seems, the uncanny ability to keep all his powerful owners happy.

“I suppose we’re finished then,” he said, heavy with irony. In Nicholls’s eyes, twinkling over a mug of coffee in his Somerset office, there was etched a mix of amusement, defiance and determination. A good deal may have gone from this gilded yard but the mighty enthusiasm and self-belief of the trainer